


Thinner Than Blood

by Hellesgift



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hellesgift/pseuds/Hellesgift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam learns a few things about Dean. Dean is, as usual, oblivious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thinner Than Blood

They pulled up beside a big old Victorian house, exuberant in violet and mauve, fussy as only a grand old painted lady could be. Sam imagined for a second that she twitched her skirts away fastidiously as the impala rumbled to a stop at the curb; but when he looked around, he realized she must be used to slumming by now. Beside the extravagant old house, a new bunker-like building hunched in proletariat blandness, and if their car was the wrong style to sit in front of the grand dame, at least the Impala had style. The bunker took utilitarianism to an in-your-face extreme, and the rest of the block of nondescript row housing was no better.

"They've got wireless in the library," Dean jerked his head toward the anachronistic house, and for the first time Sam noticed the fussy gilt sign proclaiming the building's new calling. "You can probably stay out here and still log on...I'll just be a minute." Without waiting for an answer he pulled himself out of the car, still stiff from their last hunt, and walked toward the bunker. Too bad, really...Sam would have given a lot to see Dean's leather-jacketed self climb the purple stairs into the library. Sam can't quite imagine that: Dean would probably sew a rainbow flag to the jacket first.

He was right about the wireless network, though, and Sam had saved four promising leads on the curse they were tracking when the driver's side door opened again. A thump from the back seat alerted him to the fact that Dean had thrown something behind them, and Sam gave in to curiosity once distance forced him to give in to necessity...no more research unless their hotel had internet.

"What'd you get?"

Dean didn't look back, just shrugged. "Mail."

Of course the bunker had been the post office. Trust municipal style or lack thereof. "Anything?"

"Nothing big."

Sam hadn't realized Dean spent enough time in this godforsaken little burg to keep an account with the post office, but as Dean had pointed out, it was in a good location for accessing a lot of the Northeast. And although it wasn't quite as hideous as it had looked from the interstate, presumably it was cheap. "You come here often?

Dean smirked at the tired line. "Nah. Not for a while. But when you first...a while back I spent a few months here, on and off. Helped the Patels get rid of a hex; they let me stay for free now. It's close to stuff."

"They got internet?"

"Not likely."

Yeah. So back to the painted lady tomorrow. Sam didn't really want to delve too deeply into Dean's past in this crossroad hamlet: Dean didn't talk much about the time when Sam was in college, and the few stories Sam had heard made him glad for that silence. With nothing else to do, Sam reached back and grabbed the rubber-banded packet of mail.

Flyers. Catalogues. Soldier of Fortune. Guns and Ammo. "Dude, they have any problems with you getting this kind of stuff?"

Dean looked over at the cover, with its near-pornographic display of firepower. "You looked around this place, Sammy? They call this the Confederate North. Believe it or not, I'm the one who's normal here."

Sam thought back to the truck stop they'd just left. He couldn't really argue.

Another advertisement. A sales pitch for a flea market. A postcard...

A postcard with a bright, perky cartoon of a smiling racoon wearing a party hat. 'We know it's not polite to ask for gifts, but it's been two months... ' proclaimed cheerful curling script on the front. 

The hell?

Unrepentantly curious, Sam turned it over. A date and a location were stamped on the back, along with the word 'Bloodmobile.' He laughed to himself. Pretty sad when a random mistaken appeal from the Red Cross looked more out of place than a magazine for mercenaries.

He flipped through the pages, and there was another card--the same picture, the same stamp with a different date. A few more magazines and catalogues later, there was another one. This time there was a handwritten note on the back, and Sam couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"We miss you, Dean. Hope to see you this time, Donna" he read, incredulously. "Are you kidding me?"

"What?" Dean's voice was studiously flat, but Sam ignored the warning because this was too good to pass up.

"Dude, you gave blood to mack on a girl?" Dean just scowled, so Sam continued in a high falsetto, "Dean, we miss you sooo much. Love, Donna."

"She's like eighty years old, Sam."

"That makes it better?"

"Just drop it."

"No, seriously, this goes beyond Oedipal, Dean, this is--"

"She bakes, okay?" Dean was driving a little too fast for the road, and Sam noted the warning this time. Only extreme stress warranted risking Dean's Impala. "She makes stuff for the blood donors. Cinnamon rolls the size of fucking hubcaps."

"And she missed you?"

"We're here." The stop was too quick, and Sam had to brace himself painfully against the dash. Dean obviously thought that the subject had been dropped, and Sam forced himself to wait through the Patel family welcome, watching jadedly as the pretty doe-eyed daughter smiled and blushed and shuffled behind her father...watching with more surprise as the pretty doe-eyed son smiled and blushed and touched Dean's arm. Mrs. Patel gave Dean a big hug, which Dean bore with surprising fortitude, and then Mr. Patel showed them to "his best room", which was better than Sam had hoped for. They were unpacking in the encouragingly clean and spacious--if old-fashioned--room when Sam reopened the subject.

"Did you actually donate blood?"

From the set of Dean's shoulders it was obvious he didn't want to answer, but Sam knew his own powers now--some of them, anyway--so he asked again, and he was drawing a breath to ask the third time when Dean gave in. 

"Yeah. A few times."

"You gave blood."

"Yeah."

"You."

"Uh huh."

"Gave blood."

"Yeah, I did." Dean snapped, and Sam thought: paydirt. "I gave blood. Every couple of months for a while. Every time they'd take me. Every time I was in town."

"Why?" Sam really didn't understand, but he still felt bad when Dean turned a look of frustrated disappointment on him. 

"It's a good thing to do. It helps people." As if he'd given away too much, Dean turned away, reaching for the bag that held his guns, using them for comfort as he often did. "Not everybody can do it. I can. If there's one thing I can do, it's bleed, right?"

"Dean, you--"

"So I did, and I got some good intel out of it, too, because it turns out that Donna's the biggest gossip in town. So I'd go in and bleed for the cause and she'd tell me who was fooling around with who and whadaya know...pretty soon I could figure out who'd be getting hexed."

"Dean, I didn't mean--"

"She liked having someone to talk to. She was lonely, okay?" Dean didn't look up, but he fumbled the gun in his hand for a second, and Sam sat up straight, understanding suddenly. Suddenly not wanting to understand.

"Dean--"

"Just drop it."

Repeating didn't work for Dean; Sam had little respect for useless orders and it didn't increase with repetition. Pulling the last postcard--with Donna's note--from the pocket where he had shoved it, he checked the back again. "Says here the bloodmobile will be at the town square on Friday."

"Shut the fuck up, Sam," Dean said.

"No, man, come on. I'm not giving you shit." It wasn't a lot of fun, talking to Dean's rigid back, obliquely apologizing to unrelenting chill, but Sam was getting better at it. Pretty soon he'd do this as well as Dean could bleed. Unless he got better at other communication first. "We should do it. You're right, it's a good thing to do. And maybe Donna has some info on this new thing haunting the locals."

Dean didn't turn around, but the angry unpacking slowed. 

"You can introduce your little brother. Make her day."

Dean snorted. "You overestimate your appeal and underestimate her good taste."

"Maybe." Crossing to the bed, Sam pulled out the last of the guns, setting the bag aside. "Come on, Dean. We'll go give blood. Bleed together. In a formal, non-monster setting for once."

"You hate needles."

True. "Yeah, I know. But I love cinnamon rolls." The rest of the sentence remained unstated, but Sam had reason to trust in Dean's ability to hear the unspoken. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and then Dean relaxed, falling almost imperceptibly out of fight stance.

"Okay. Friday, then. Donna's gonna love you." Turning away, Dean grabbed the next bag to unpack. There was obviously nothing more to say. But that was okay. 

Sam's hearing was pretty good, too.

***

Dean had been amazingly patient with Donna's fussing--Sam wondered if it was a female thing, or an old lady thing, or just that they were actually friends--and Dean had even put up with some fluttering attention from Mrs. Patel and her daughter. But obviously the line was drawn when Sam tried to get him to lie down in their room. Sam kept seeing the way Dean had wavered and almost fallen, keeps seeing him falling to his knees, lying still and silent in the dark...and Dean seems to give him some slack for these residual visions, because he doesn't snap or yell as Sam is half expecting. He does say, pretty calmly for Dean, that he's going to see if Mr. Patel needs any help in the maintenance shed behind the motel.

Sam reminds himself that the nurses said it was nothing unusual. It's the toughest guys who get woozy, you know. And Dean often needed a little extra time afterwards. Of course, I always thought that was just a play for another cinnamon roll, the smiling, matronly nurse had looked over to where Donna was hovering over Dean, and Sam realized that he had never known there were so many women who were actually fond of his brother. In this select group--where one of the nurses jokingly crooned old love songs with the words not-so-subtly altered (I only have blood for you) and no one flirted--Dean was a nice guy. 

It was more disconcerting than watching him sway and lose color as he stood up after 'bleeding for the cause.'

Sam knows it really isn't a big deal--he'd gotten a little lightheaded himself--so he doesn't watch as Dean leaves their room, doesn't watch him cross the parking lot. The knock on the door startles him, and he's rolling his eyes as he stands to open it.

"Didn't get very far, did...oh. Sorry. Thought you were Dean."

The Patel son--Sam hadn't caught the first name--shakes his head. "No, no such luck. Can I come in? I brought extra towels." He raises his hands which, yes, are holding a pile of towels. They hadn't requested extra towels, but Winchesters do not turn away potential bandages. 

"Sure, yeah. Uh, I'm sorry, I don't--" Sam stops as Patel junior walks into the room and sits down on Dean's bed. "Uh..."

"So you're what I couldn't replace." The dark eyes seem to be measuring him, and Sam is distinctly aware that he's been found wanting.

"Uh...what?"

"You know, it's kind of funny." The look on the guy's face is anything but amused. "I gave him trouble one time for treating me more like a kid brother than a lover. Not a successful argument on my part, although he started talking to me again after a day or so."

"You--"

"And now you're back, I guess. I mean, I see you here. And Dean seems--lighter, somehow, which is good. Dean's a great guy, you know--"

Sam stiffens at the implication that he might not know, "Yeah, I know he's--"

"Do you really? Do you know what he did for our family?"

"Removed a hex." Sam doesn't mean to sound dismissive, but the second he says it he sees his error.

"So you don't know. Not really. He's never told you about that scar near his hip?" The guy's hand traces a truly horrific length from abdomen to thigh, and Sam winces. He'd seen a sliver of new scar above Dean's hipbone, but he hadn't guessed at the full extent.

"Not--"

"Then you don't know what he did for us." Patel narrows his eyes, and Sam suddenly realizes his mistake. He'd seen the smooth brown skin, soft fall of hair, huge dark eyes, and he'd thought 'pretty' without looking beyond that. This kid is pretty, yes, but pretty like a Toledo blade...and just as sharp.

"You don't know what he did for me and my family, because he wouldn't let us call anyone. There aren't that many numbers in his cell, and I was going to go through them, but every time he came to he told us not to call. My sister couldn't stop crying, my mother wouldn't stop praying, and my dad was planning what would happen if we never did find anyone who cared--if afterwards we called and there was no one--"

"After what?" Something in Sam's voice shuts Patel up, and there's a ringing silence in the room, ghosts of feelings waiting for the salt of words.

Sighing, the kid stands up. "Look, you seem like a nice guy, and Dean's better now, Dean's whole in some way he wasn't before. But he's not exactly happy, still. And I'm not claiming I can fill any gaps in his life--I sure as hell did an awful job filling in the gaping, bleeding hole that must have been you--" Sam tries to speak and freezes at the imperious motion of one strong brown hand. "But we used to have fun, and Dean deserves some of that, right?"

"What--"

"So stop being here all the time." Long hair falls across his face as he shakes his head impatiently. "I can't believe I'm saying this, because back in the gaping-hole days, I would have done anything to find out what Dean was missing. But you're here now, and that's cool--Dean's better for it. But you don't always have to be here, right? Three damn days and it's like you two are Siamese twins, not brothers. Go in to town. Grab a burger. See a movie. Hell, take my sister--she obviously thinks you're cute. Just...don't be around for a couple of hours, okay? I know I don't get any more than that, now. I knew that even before I knew why. But just--" the slightly bitter monologue stops abruptly, and Sam follows his gaze to the window. "Hell." Dean is walking back across the parking lot, brisk and purposeful without a sign of weakness. "Don't tell him--"

"Yeah, this is exactly the conversation I want to have with my brother." Sam grimaces, and for a second they actually share a wry grin. Patel shakes himself free of the moment like a dog shedding water and slips out of the door before Sam can say anything else. 

Sam doesn't plan to watch, but the curtains are open, and his eyes have been opened, and he sees the kid stop beside Dean by the Impala. They exchange a few words, the kid leaning into Dean, looking up at Dean--Sam has seen those eyes now, and he can imagine their effect glancing up through long, dark lashes--and Sam tends to forget that Dean is actually tall, but he's reminded again. Patel is at least five-ten, but he looks almost delicate beside Dean, swaying in to him like Dean's magnetism is literal.

Dean tilts his head slightly, and Sam has to imagine his expression, something fond but light, lips curling in a macho smirk. And then Dean's hand comes up, and Sam's imaginings dissipate like fog. Dean runs the back of his fingers along the kid's glossy hair, then reaches under, resting his palm on the kid's collarbone, his fingers curling over the kid's shoulder, his thumb along the pulse point. The kid's eyes close, and Sam jerks his gaze from the window, studiously and blindly staring at the screen of his laptop as he boots it up.

By the time Dean comes in the room, Sam's heart has returned to a normal pace and his palms have dried. He doesn't look up, doesn't check to see how Dean looks, and this is enough to tip him off. After all, Dean had left because of excessive smothering.

"Sammy, you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, no, I just--I think I need to go back to the library. I think I missed something."

"You didn't."

"Maybe I did, okay? I think I missed--I think I need to be careful, need to be thorough here."

Dean stares at him like he's not making any sense. Sometimes Dean is way too perceptive. "Cute librarian?"

Sometimes, of course, he's dumb as a rock. "Yeah, that's it, Dean." Shaking his head, Sam gathers up the laptop and snags the keys off the top of the TV. "I'm gonna go back there now, get a few hours in before they close at 10. Don't expect me before then," he says, and he tries very hard not to see that Dean's eyes dart to the window. 

"Yeah, okay, Sammy. Say hi to Marian, for me," the joke falls flatter than usual, but Dean isn't trying very hard and Sam doesn't pause to respond. The door closing behind him sounds soft, more of a comma than a period.

As Sam starts up the engine, he sees the Patel kid disengage himself from the shadows where two outer walls of the motel meet in a sharp corner. He and Sam don't exchange words or even a glance--they've shared all they're going to, already.

As Sam pulls out of the driveway onto the road into what passes for downtown, he consoles himself with that thought. He's not really sharing Dean, not even now. The kid knows that, too. The kid knows he never really had Dean, not in any way that counts. Sam can afford to be gracious.


End file.
